An enticing blend: a few parts food, a few parts travel, one part history, a part or two of art, and a dash of nature.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Celebrating Election Day and Inauguration Day

As I planned an inauguration day breakfast with a friend, I remembered an election night many years ago. That night, as part of a celebratory dinner, I made some flag-adorned chocolate truffles and took pictures of them. So I dug into my shoebox of pre-digital-era photographs, eventually finding two photos from the evening. I initially couldn't remember whether the photos were from 1992 or 1996 and the photos were not dated. Fortunately, one of the photos included a New York Times Arts Section with the headline "Time to Change the Clock on Times Square" that enabled me to find the date in the New York Times database: November 1, 1992.

They tasted much better than they looked, made even better by the excitement of the night. If I remember correctly, my chocolate truffles in those days were made using a recipe from Alice Medrich's difficult but delicious Cocolat.

My friend and I brought the red, white and blue theme to breakfast with blue cornmeal crepes (using heirloom cornmeal and local milk, flour and eggs*), white yogurt (from Straus Family Creamery in Marin County) and redplum jam (homemade by me using fruit from a backyard tree and local honey). Although I couldn't have known it when I pulled it out of the refrigerator before the ceremony began, we also had homemade Meyer lemon marmalade with a color that almost matched Michelle Obama's dazzling garb (using the recipe and helpful photographic instructions from Elise). The red, white, and blue, plus a bit of fruit on the side made for a tasty start to a remarkable day.

* The crepe batter was actually a pale shade of green because of the mixture of blue corn meal and bright yellow yolks from pastured eggs.

Paula -- thanks for the comment and link to your inauguration story. It's a beautiful tale. I bet that there are thousands of wonderful stories around 1/20/09 -- I hope that a few oral histories are underway.